This invention relates to recording video sequences on mobile electronic devices and, more particularly, a method and system for facilitating a user's ability to conform the length of a video sequence recorded on a wireless communication device to a target use for the video sequence.
Wireless communication devices, such as mobile phones, pocket PCs and personal data assistants, often have a video capture system with capability to record short video sequences. These captured video sequences can be stored, transported and played-back in many different ways. For example, they can be stored on a local memory of the device and played-back on the device. They can be stored on a removable memory card inserted in the device and played-back on the device or transported and played-back on another device that receives the removable memory card. They can be stored on a local memory of the device and transported via a wired connection to another local device for playback. Or they can be stored on a local memory of the device and transported via a wireless connection to a remote device for playback.
Each of these target uses may have a different limit length for video sequences. Limit lengths may be inherent in or imposed upon the recording device, the playback device and the mode through which a video sequence is transported between such devices. For example, a local memory of a device may have a first limit length for a stored video sequence, a removable memory card may have a second limit length for a stored video sequence, and a transportation mode between devices may have a third limit length for a transported video sequence. With regard to the latter type of limit, one popular service for transporting a video sequence over a cellular telephone network is Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). Operators of cellular networks that support MMS commonly impose a limit, such as 100 kilobytes, on the size of the MMS message that is used to carry a video sequence.
Despite these limit lengths, most conventional wireless communication devices are not known to notify a user of how long a video sequence can be without exceeding a limit length associated with a target use, with the result that captured video sequences often violate limit lengths unbeknownst to the user. Such over-limit video sequences may be cropped such that the end of the video sequence is not viewable upon playback, and in some cases may be unable to be played-back at all. Moreover, cropping may impose extensive processing and memory requirements.
Helvick U.S. application Ser. No. 11/583,230, assigned to the assignee hereof (“Helvick I”), proposes a method and system for informing a user of a wireless communication device about conformance of a video sequence captured by the user with a target use for the video sequence. In Helvick I, a video sequence is rendered on a display while information on conformance of the video sequence with at least one target use for the video sequence is rendered simultaneously on the display. The conformance information may comprise representations of a current length and a limit length of the target use of the video sequence in a progress bar format. A first notification is rendered on the display upon approaching the limit length and a second notification is rendered on the display upon exceeding the limit length.
While the target use length limit notifications provided in Helvick I are useful, the user has the burden to continuously monitor progress and terminate video capture at just the right time. Attentive and cautious users may terminate video capture before the limit length of the target use is reached, resulting in less than full exploitation of limit length allowed by the target use and suboptimal video sequences. Inattentive or insufficiently cautious users may terminate video capture after the limit length of the target use is exceeded, resulting in over-limit video sequences with the attendant problems discussed above.